Executive Summary

This client, a teaching hospital, needs help to maintain their required staffing levels. Malone, partnering with an established local minority-owned business, was awarded a contract to provide nurses with wide-ranging specialties as well as various types of medical technicians.

Putting together a comprehensive recruiting plan that included the use of multiple media and weeklong Community Job Fairs, the Malone partnership has been successful in providing this hospital client with the professionals it needs to maintain their high standards of care.

The Client

Major metropolitan teaching hospital including health centers and dialysis center

Located in a major metropolitan city, this teaching hospital consists of a full-service hospital, three community-based health centers, and a freestanding dialysis center. Providing care to over 2 million residents, this hospital offers professional education and training to over 30 health-focused programs, including a College of Medicine, a College of Nursing, and a College of Public Health.

The Challenge

Maintaining required provider levels depended on qualified staffing partners

This client provides medical care to a culturally diverse and medically varied patient population. As a nationally acclaimed healthcare teaching institution, the client has stringent requirements for its healthcare providers. To maintain required staffing levels, multiple healthcare staffing companies provide nursing and allied locum tenens. Providers must meet the client’s requirements for levels of competency and experience, and supplemental providers must undergo a thorough testing and orientation process. Based on the scope of nursing specialties and the specialized technicians required, the client offered staffing agency bidders the option to provide local and/or travel nurses and technicians.

The Approach

Targeted promotion and use of Community Job Fairs prove invaluable

For this work, Malone decided to partner with an established local minority-owned business. Based on prior partnerships with this business, Malone was confident of providing comprehensive, cost-effective staffing solutions that met the client’s requirements. With the partner on board, the team proposed an intensive, targeted recruiting campaign.

Upon winning the work, Malone requested a list of anticipated position requisitions and developed a comprehensive nursing and technician staffing support plan. The plan’s details were based on the team’s knowledge of the client and their facilities; familiarity with the location and its cultural diversity; and insights into the local healthcare labor market. A tailored recruiting plan was designed to build a pool of CNAs, LPNs, RNs of all specialties, nurse practitioners, and EKG, OR, and haemodialysis technicians.

Malone highlighted the positions on both companies’ websites, social media platforms, local job boards, community specific print media, and emails to current and prior nursing and technician staff in their existing candidate databases. The recruiting team also held a weeklong Community Job Fair. During the job fair, applicants used computers to complete online applications, take skills and medication tests, provide copies of their credentialing information (including copies of their immunization records and contact information for their physicals and their references), and undergo the first of structured interviews. Applicants could return on subsequent days to submit any missing documentation, sign outstanding release forms, take remaining skills tests, or have their first structured interview.

As the pool of nursing providers and technicians grew, Malone proposed ongoing communication with facility stakeholders to proactively prepare for anticipated increases in position requests, and plan for new provider client testing, orientation, and floor orientation based on the client’s training calendar.

Results

Malone finds and retains local talent to fulfill the hospital’s ongoing needs

The recruiting approach has proven effective in providing the client their needed healthcare professionals and maintaining high standards of care:

• All technicians and nursing providers have been local.
• Malone’s competitive compensation package has fostered a high provider retention rate.
• A tailored applicant assessment process has helped retain nursing and technician professionals through the extended onboarding process (of approximately 45 days from submitting a credentialing packet to the provider beginning work) and reduced time-to-fill rates.
• Malone’s staffing specialists and account manager have built close relationships with the providers, helping them navigate the client’s onboarding process.
• The weeklong Community Job Fair has proven so successful Malone continues to hold one every year.